The following article was written by Jeremy Mansfield, Green
Cross Australia's head of development, a corporate volunteer and
Lend Lease Sustainability Manager - Queensland and NT. It was
published on The Fifth
Estate on 24 January 2013, and is reproduced here with kind
permission.

Adapt and survive - from hindsight to
foresight

Adapt and survive is the mantra of business leaders the world
over, though not so commonly in the context of climate adaptation.
To respond to climate change the construction industry will need to
develop the adaptive capacity to innovate for resilience.

As an environmental not-for-profit that empowers Australians to
take practical, informed steps to adapt to the changing climate,
Green Cross Australia is at the heart of the
issue.

Buildings and infrastructure must have the resilience to
accommodate climate change - this is not just about reducing the
impacts of climatic events but how to manage and respond to them.
Put simply, ignoring resilience may have a long term detrimental
effect on climate change adaptation.

Following recent climate events such as the Tasmanian and
Victorian bush fires and the Brisbane floods, a series of key
questions arose.

Are our buildings being adequately designed, delivered and
operated? Do they enable a controlled response and provide a
flexible and safe adaptation to a crisis or disruption as it
unfolds? Will they support a return to normal operations as quickly
and efficiently as possible?

We face a major dilemma in addressing these questions due to our
historical approach to current standards and codes, which emphasise
life/safety and meeting minimum standards and assume a constant
climate.

The Insurance Council of Australia, in a recent
submission to the Productivity Commission,
outlined that the National Code of Construction "…permits the
construction of buildings (at a minimum standard) that include no
element of durability (property protection), creating a stock of
buildings that whilst 'safe' are increasingly brittle to extreme
weather events".

Under current code objectives - health, safety, amenity and
sustainability - buildings are primarily designed and built to
reduce risks to human life, rather than to minimise damage to the
building.

"While a focus on life preservation is likely to also achieve
some degree of protection to the building, 'building durability' is
not a primary objective.

Building codes in Australia have a history dating back to
Federation. The foundation of the codes is drawn from over 100
years of historic climate experience and data. The codes tend to
look back to the past to tell us how to build for the future.
Likewise, the Australia Building Codes Board has
traditionally relied on historical climate and weather data in
setting standards.

More recently the ABCB used scientifically-based climate change
projections in its review of wind standards for construction in
cyclone-affected areas. It is, however, early days as no changes to
the codes have yet been made that take into account climate change
impacts.

We need to challenge our current premise that a minimum standard
is good enough, as it has worked in the past and is what the
'market' desires. The increasing need to cope with adversity in our
climate will make redundant those design decisions based on
hindsight.

The ABCB's 2012 submission to the Productivity Commission
demonstrated that recent extreme events show new buildings have
been performing well in preventing structural collapses, but
property and content losses could still be considerable. The
broadening of the regulators' mandate to include building
durability (property protection) will take time given overall
impact on the building regulation framework and the role of private
sector insurance, along with potential cost impacts to
industry.

Given that 97 per cent of our buildings are existing stock, how
many organisations do a post-disaster audit, rather than just
fixing up the obvious damage? We need to be addressing problems
that manifest in the future.

Due to the non-retrospective nature of building regulation, the
National Code of Construction (formally Building
Code of Australia) is not applicable to existing buildings, which
form the majority of the building stock.

Clearly a greater focus will need to be placed on how existing
buildings and infrastructure can be made more resilient to the
effects of climate change, highlighting the particular challenges
in retro-fitting. Clearly, upfront changes in planning and design
to address resilience will be cheaper than making changes after
infrastructure is built.

Inadequacy of current codes in addressing climate change
adaptation was also identified in the 2012 Productivity
Commission Draft Report on Barriers to Effective Climate Change
Adaptation. The report suggests largely that "the market"
should handle the issue.

"There is a risk that existing regulatory frameworks might "lock
in" maladaptive action, which could compromise the short, medium
and long-term resilience of our infrastructure. A new approach is
needed to ensure that effective responses to climate change are
embedded in relevant regulatory frameworks so that our
infrastructure and associated services are resilient to climate
change as we move into the future. (Productivity Commission
Draft Report on Barriers to Effective Climate Change Adaptation
2012.)

Insurance companies are themselves adapting to survive in our
changing climate. In response to recent extreme weather events,
some insurance companies are already withdrawing from "high risk"
areas and increasing premiums more generally. For example, house
insurance premiums have risen by about 15 per cent per year in the
last four years (2009- 2012) compared with annual increases of less
than 5 per cent over the previous decade (Insurance
Statistics Australia. Updated November 27, 2012)

New tools to evaluate resilience levels of housing are also
under development by the Insurance Council of
Australia and reinsurers are re-evaluating risk
frameworks, in light of changing risk.

Over time this will flow through to general insurers putting
even more pressure on premiums.

In its new report, Coming Ready or Not, The Climate Institute looked at
recent research on the physical impacts and flow-on consequences of
climate change on major Australian infrastructure assets. The stark
findings of this research found the electricity, financial services
and road and rail sectors are underprepared. Property is at an
early stage of preparation and the water supply sector is
relatively advanced.

Maintaining the status quo is no longer an option - we have to
shift to a new paradigm by proactively adopting a philosophy of
best practice and examining how we can improve the continuity,
insurability and long-term value of our assets.

Other issues examined in the seminars will include the
increasing demands on buildings and infrastructure needed to
withstand increasing extremities of climate, and to return to full
operation following a significant event.

"It should change the dictum of minimum standards and consider
the ability of our infrastructure and our buildings and services to
support the communities and occupants they serve and adapt to
change."

An outcome of the seminar series is to present a call for
action, to bring together key stakeholders from the major
institutions and governing bodies to form a collaborative action
forum.

Green Cross Australia chief executive officer Mara Bun says the
seminars were an opportunity to realign the present focus from
coping with disasters, to a focus on the future.

The 2013 Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers
seminar series will open engaged discussion on measures that can be
taken to gain meaningful levels of resilience in existing and new
building stock and infrastructure.

It will consider key issues such as location and access of key
building services, adequacy of redundancy and future availability
and reliability of infrastructure, insurers' attitudes to risk,
building resilience and future claims, issues uncovered in
diligence surveys of buildings that lead to building failure and
risk associated with not informing stakeholders of known building
resilience weaknesses.

I will lead a series of property sector half-day seminars across
Australia and New Zealand in March and April.

They will be supported by experts from the insurance and
building services industries, the team will discuss a range of
issues that now present real challenges to the industry's ability
to deal with climate related events and why business as usual
approaches are no longer acceptable.

The seminars will be held in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth,
Adelaide, Wellington and Christchurch during March and April 2013.
Details here.